Switch port throughput goes from 4Gbit/sec to 8Gbit/sec

Brocade announced today that its has increased the port count on its Fibre Channel backbone switch blades by 33% and doubled the throughput from 4Gbit/sec to 8Gbit/sec.

Brocade Communications Systems Inc. today announced that it has increased the port count on the blades used in its Fibre Channel backbone switch by 33% and doubled the throughput on those ports from 4Gbit/sec to 8Gbit/sec.

The storage networking vendor said it has increased the number of ports per blade for its flagship DCX backbone switch and its midsize DCX-4S backbone switch.

The Brocade DCX 64-port blade

The DCX is a 14U (24.5-in) high switch with eight vertical blade slots. Brocade said it has increased the number of Fibre Channel ports on each blade from 48 to 64, meaning the DCX can now have up to 512 ports. Built for midsize networks, the 8U-high Brocade DCX-4S has four horizontal blade slots. The total port count in that switch grows from 192 to 256.

"This is the industry's first 64-port Fibre Channel blade," said Bill Dunmire, director of product marketing for Brocade's Data Center Products division. "This increases the ability of users to consolidate their Fibre Channel environments and provides greater scalability without a larger footprint in the data center."

Brocade customers will be able to upgrade their existing DCX switches by simply pulling an existing 4Gbit/sec Fibre Channel blade and inserting a new 8Gbit/sec blade. Brocade also plans to release a 16Gbit/sec Fibre Channel blade for the DCX next year, Dunmire said.

The Brocade DCX Backbone switch

"Because of the increase in wire-speed density in this blade, customers are recognizing they can connect directly from a host [server] to that switch in a server farm...to relieve the need for edge Fibre Channel switches. And, that's fewer components that they have to manage," Dunmire said.